Tuesday, February 10, 2009

On his blog, Ax Anthology editor Sean Michael Wilson has recently posted a few new tidbits of information. Well, not tidbits per se... more like family-sized, hearty morsels! First up is the official book cover, which keeps the Akino Kondoh illustration but refines the text and title box (and adds a very hopeful, "Vol. One").

The second and, in my opinion, more awesome piece of information: Sean has posted a complete list of all the mangaka that will be included in Volume One, including their names in Kanji, the titles of their manga, which volume of Ax it originally appeared in, and the number of pages! Here is the full list:

We have a project for hardcore fans that wanna help the group with internet sleuthing... Over on the new Electric Ant Zine Blog (EAZB), my friend Robert Syrett started a post called "AX RESEARCH PROJECT". Rob is a hardcore indie manga fan and collector, and has a dangerous stockpile of Ax back issues; He is also, to my knowledge, the only white boy to ever get a fan letter published in Ax... (Pictures coming soon!).

So yeah, we've started compiling links, artist homepages, and images for all of the Ax mangaka on Sean's list. Ed from MangaCast already did us a solid (ha!) by posting a bunch of covers to books by these artists. If you have some time, please stop by the post and share your knowledge in the comments. Comments are open to all and we'd love to have your help. Per Sean's comment, you can also voice your thoughts on which artists you'd most like to see an excerpt from... HAPPY HUNTING!

I am so excited about this I don't quite know how to put it into words! I will definitely be spending some time more thoroughly researching the artists that are going to be put into this anthology as soon as I get my Japanese Assessment out of the way!

@jimpac: Awesome, very glad to have you on board! I've been swamped this week, but plan to try and post a few "reports" on an artist each week. I recognize some of the names from reading Ax, and from TacoCHE and Seirinkogeisha's books, but I think a lot of artists will be ones whose art we all recognize but never knew their names or background. Should be exciting!

I have never read anything by Nishioka Kyoudai - what's the style like, if you had to compare it to someone else?

After discovering him on this blog, I got the reissued volume of Hanawa's earlier Ero-Guro works (before his medieval obsession) from the '70s. He is closest to the old ukiyo-e woodcuts, I think. Maybe it's true what they say in "Comics Underground" - Maruo is doubtless influenced by him.